Following his departure from Platinum Games, Hideki Kamiya announced his new studio, ‘Clovers,’ back in December at The Game Awards 2024, alongside the news that the studio would be teaming up with Capcom to release a follow-up to the cult classic Okami. During Kamiya’s original tenure at Capcom, he worked closely with Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami at Capcom Production Studio 4, which resulted in him directing Resident Evil 2 and the original version of Resident Evil 4 – which turned into Devil May Cry. Despite the two not having been under the same roof since Mikami finished work on Vanquish in 2010, Kamiya still uses the Resident Evil creator as a source of inspiration years later.
Speaking to Game*Spark (translated by Automaton Media), Kamiya says that Mikami’s teachings from his time at Capcom directly impact how he teaches his staff today. "I don’t tell the staff, ‘This is what Mikami-san would say,’ every step of the way," he says. "But in the course of developing games up to now, I have always made decisions based on his teachings, and I have shared them with the production team.
"Back then, we used to call what Mikami taught us the ‘spirit of the 4th.’" Kamiya says, adding, "The reason I left PlatinumGames was because the company’s way of thinking was gradually shifting towards a modern model of game development that doesn’t place importance on the creators’ individuality," presumably referencing Platinum’s shift to live-service titles like Babylon’s Fall (with Kamiya’s Project G.G. allegedly being turned into a live-service title during development). Kamiya felt so strongly about this that he didn’t care if leaving Platinum marked the end of his creating games, saying, "even if it meant the end of my career as a creator, I couldn’t allow myself to kill my soul in order to work in an environment that I didn’t agree with."
The Mikami-led Capcom Production Studio 4 was a bastion of creativity at Capcom, giving us the likes of Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Killer 7, and this is something that has followed Kamiya throughout his career. Clover Studio – despite only sticking around for three years – made the wild trio of Viewtiful Joe, Okami, and God Hand. The name Clover Studio was an abbreviation of ‘creativity lover,’ with Kamiya taking that one step (or three steps) further with Clovers, which the director says stands for "Creativity," "Challenge," "Craftsmanship," and "our 4th C…" on the Clovers website.
Despite being happy to leave Platinum Games in the past, Kamiya recently said he would love to take another crack at making the canceled Microsoft collab, Scalebound.
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